Based on listening to Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here" one too many times. Nothing here belongs to me, but you knew that already.

So right now I'm watching the light do to him all the things I want to, from across the room. It kisses all the contours of his face, sharp lines like ice. Yes. That would suit him, cheekbones and slightly damp lips, all carved out of ice. I'd like to kiss him and see if he melts beneath my lips. I'm always warm, like I'm running a constant fever. Sometimes we're talking or eating and some part of my bare skin will brush against his, and I'll panic, because in all honesty our temperature's are so different and he's so cold I think I'm going to melt straight through his skin, trails of water dripping everywhere. It's a scary thought.

It's a hot day, sunlight streaming everywhere, and the light is still on him, pooling into the bruise coloured hollows around his eyes, he hasn't been sleeping, just like me, and his nose and fuck. His mouth opens to speak and the light gets in there, it's all sharp teeth and damp red (has he been melting from the inside?), red like the inside of a nearly raw steak or a dead animal on the side of the road that isn't rotten yet and can still taste life. I want to tell him not to stay out in the light because I did, and now it's stuck in my skin and I'm bleached a golden-brown. He should stay pale, you really can't be made of ice if you go sunbathing all the time. His mouth is still open now, damn, because he's talking at me and I'm staring.

My brain makes noise.

I ask him to repeat what he says. And he gives me that amused look he'd never admit to, the one that means Zell, you are such a dork.


Now it's later and I'm in my room, sitting on the floor with my back against my bed. I'm cradling a book open in my lap and reading it while half-aware, just letting the words slide over me.

I thought Quistis ws going to have a heart attack and fall down the stairs (and then maybe he'd come running for her like he wouldn't for me, blood all over his pristine white skin from her smashed in face) when I asked for some "literature."

To impress the laydeez, I had lied. Can you give me some good stuff? Something that doesn't give me a brain aneurysm?

Unfortunate phrase, it just popped out. It left me wondering what would happen if I had an aneurysm and Quistis had a heart attack, would he cry? Would he be heartbroken and cry ice water all over our graves? I doubt it. Either way, Quistis remained in good health and gave me some books in return for my lame excuse. I think she thought I wanted to impress the girl from the library. In truth, all I wanted was a way of getting to sleep that didn't involve magic, and nothing puts me to sleep faster than pages and pages of words I don't really understand.

That was, what, a month ago? Two months? Three. It's nearly Spring again, we're coming out of Winter, his season. Time flies when you don't sleep much- you do more and it seems like there's less days. When there's light it goes by in a flurry of snow and rain and weather. Blood on the floor and the white sinks in the toilets when another student gets into a fistfight or just gives up on breathing, Whenever he touches me my heart stops and it doesn't start beating again until I junction Quez's electricity through my veins. Nights go slower. I tend not to sleep if I can avoid it. I'm used to it, at first it was an extention of my "natural energy" (I was a hyperactive little bitch, climbing up the walls), as the doctors put it. Now I seem to have calmed down, and instead of staying up all night because I don't want to stop bouncing on the bed, it's because I don't want to dream.

This night is agonizingly slow, because the book I'm reading is poetry. "The Wasteland." I will show you terror in a handful of dust. Come in under the shadow of this red rock. All straight over my head.

Some books Quistis gave me were alright. The Catcher In The Rye, I read that a few times because it was unusual for me to read something I really got, and Catch-22 cracked me up. I should've shown it to him. It's a book about whores and the military. What's there not to love? One of them, though, 1984, was creepy. For a start, I had to keep going back to re-read the page and puzzle out the longer words, like "proletariat," and "abolished." And Room 101, that stuck with me for a long time. I kept wondering, what would my personal nightmare be? Would it be enough to make me stop loving or lusting the person I needed?

At about ten past three I give in and climb into bed, still thinking. And I dream.

(I'm strapped onto a white stretcher, a white room, spread-eagled, and this is Room 101. They're trying to get a confession from me, and they're showing me my personal terror. It's small, oh god, it's in his hand, and I don't want to see, but my eyes are frozen open. They tear up and blood wells up and runs down my side my fingernails are scraping bloodied chunks out of my palm. I look and, oh god, it's my terror, and it's not dust in his hand, it's ice.)